


Cold Outside

by Ilthit



Series: JS&MN Modern AUs [4]
Category: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell - Susanna Clarke
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Non-Magical, Alternate Universe - Politics, Background Het, Bisexuality, Casual Sex, Christmas, Class Differences, Daddy Issues, Enemies With Benefits, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Homophobia, Infidelity, M/M, Not Beta Read, Paparazzi, Rimming, Smoking, Unhealthy Relationships, alternate universe - economists, bad bisexual representation, infidelity that goes unpunished, reference to a real-life political necrozoophilia scandal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-20
Updated: 2021-01-05
Packaged: 2021-03-10 04:02:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 12,946
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27647221
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ilthit/pseuds/Ilthit
Summary: Childermass and Lascelles work with the same political think-tank. This story has very little to do with that, being a fake dating Christmas fic.
Relationships: John Childermass/Henry Lascelles
Series: JS&MN Modern AUs [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1791511
Comments: 26
Kudos: 4





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Not betaed, so nitpicky C & C is welcome.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Content warning for this chapter: Necrozoophilia mention.

It’s not a great picture. It’s not even particularly dirty. Lascelles’s face is tilted up to the side, overexposed. The flash does no services to the crow’s feet at the corners of his eyes, or the dark circles under John’s. But Lascelles’s hand is drawn out by that same flash in unfortunate clarity, his fingers hooked under John’s belt. 

“Think about it,” Lascelles says, his mouth twisted in that little moue of displeasure, a crease between his eyebrows, his jaw working around the words. His collar is done up all the way today, the lapels of his neat grey coat flawlessly turned. (In the picture, the top two buttons are loose, and the shirt has a silk sheen.) “For the look of things. It’s just for a few weeks.” 

It’s maybe the third worst way anyone’s ever asked John out. 

“I’m not just for Christmas,” John quips. It’s December 20th; too late in the year for this storm in a teacup to make any difference to anyone. Lascelles is single. Not even The Sun can muster up indignation over an MP’s gay love affair this close to the holiday, even less so when it’s not adulterous. Lascelles has been loosely out as bisexual for some time, and still managed to keep his seat. As such, they’ve barely broken the Pink News barrier. “Since when do you care about the look of things?”

“Don’t be an idiot. It’s what it’s all about.” Henry is fidgeting, John realizes; the way his long fingers wrap around the paper napkin, fold it, flip it open again. A train passes by the station cafe; far too smooth to rattle the windows, but the sound of it still generates the memory in John’s head; the jingle of glass at a small station up north. Trains in London move like ghosts by comparison. 

John doesn’t press it. People reveal themselves in time if you give them the opportunity. 

Lascelles has his membership in the bag. His father sits in the House of Lords, and also happens to own big chunks of the constituency, including the main village. Not that Uthcaire doesn’t deliver a steady flow of Labour votes, but when it comes to MPs, the borough will always vote for a Lascelles. They’re proud of their old family, their stately home, the library that carries the family name, and the ornate gravestones of past generations of Lascelleses in the churchyard. 

The worst that could come out of that photograph is that people might think Henry Lascelles is a bit of a slag. Meaningless in a post-Cameron-fucking-a-pig world, really.

“Well?” Lascelles snaps. “Will you think about it?”

“All right, Henry,” John says. That first name always tastes like an insult on his tongue. He shrugs and spins Lascelles’s phone back towards him, that picture staring up out of it. “I’ll be your fake boyfriend.”

There is something satisfying about how that makes Lascelles flinch, as if getting what he asked for wasn’t what he wanted. 

-

Last Friday.

The Foundation had an agenda ready to push after the holidays and not much left to accomplish before then, so Chris suggested they celebrate--dinner together at the Clarence, and maybe drinks later. Like an office Christmas party, but less cringe, as he’d put it. Chris was marketing, he knew how to sell a night out to a group of people tired after a long week at the office. He also knew that if it was a work outing, he wouldn’t be picking up that tab.

Gilbert Norrell disappeared before any of his colleagues at the Foundation had the audacity to ask him to attend, but once Jonathan agreed, it became a ricochet of camaraderie, ending with John Childermass sitting at a long table under a crystal crown cutting into a steak that cost more than his electric bill and listening to Arabella Strange argue social mobility with Henry bloody Lascelles. 

“Class is not removed from economics, Norrellite or otherwise,” she was saying. “Transforming our production model will transform society.” Arabella edited her husband’s papers for consistency; John edited Norrell’s for common courtesy. 

“Can we not right now?” Lascelles sipped his third glass of wine; the angle of his wrist, its bones brittle and breakable, drew John’s eye. He never did have enough respect for Arabella’s insight; no, John corrected himself—for her value. Whatever Arabella and John edited, Lascelles would twist before the platform ever got near Whitehall. That’s what he was here for, and they all tolerated him because aside from Walt, he was the only MP who openly supported their work.

John watched Lascelles notice him watching him, and raised his glass at him. Lascelles smirked and reciprocated. Something passed between them. 

The company scattered, full of food and wine and talk, into a night that smelled like ice to come. The pavement shone wet, but the sky above was clearing. Chris suggested a club. John followed on the trail of free drinks. The thought of his empty flat didn’t tempt him home, not with the thin mattress and the pile of work waiting on his laptop. End of the year or not, Norrell never stopped writing. That’s why they were all here, the Alternate Economics Foundation; finding the nuggets of gold hidden in reams of Norrell’s small font Windows 2000 .doc files and changing the world with it. 

And maybe it wasn’t just the beer, because he and Lascelles had been getting into it more and more recently over work, and something had to break. He stalked the man’s skinny frame like a wolf, through the purple pulsing lights and the noise, until he diverted towards the gents’. Was he chasing or being led? 

“Just don’t get my face,” Lascelles said and put his cigarette out in the sink as he saw the look John gave him under the sputtering bathroom light. John grabbed his collar and shoved him against back wall, to a ‘Hey, hey’ from some young chap who’d been touching up his mascara at the mirror. It turned into an ‘Oh, okay’ when John kissed Lascelles, something half-way into a bite, his fingers tightening around that collar.

“Not here.” Lascelles hissed. His fists pushed hard against John’s shoulders. Perhaps he had been expecting a physical exchange of a different kind. That had happened before, too, though not often. An urge for violence pressed on John much the same way as that for sex, and that too found its twisted mirror in Lascelles.

“Why not?” John growled, and he could swear he saw Lascelles’s eyes light up for a moment before he shook his head. Despite the gesture, his fingers worked their way under John’s belt, tugging his hips closer to his own. The evening had found its trajectory.

John thought the flash was the bathroom light flickering; paid no attention to the opening and closing of a stall door. 

-

Lascelles comes by the AEF office on Monday morning with the excuse of talking to Norrell, but really for the necessary dose of piss-taking by their workmates. “Better they get it out of their system now,” he mutters to John, leaning close over a cup of dark sludge produced by the kitchenette’s espresso machine. They’ve broken the news on the group chat and changed their relationship status on Facebook. 

John lets Lascelles take the brunt of it: printouts of That Photo with pink heart stickers from Hannah’s bullet diary pinned to Mr Norrell’s beloved pinboard in the meeting room, Chris’s twenty questions, Strange’s precision quips. John still can’t call him Henry; it doesn’t feel right, probably never will, so he defaults to ‘babe’ in company, and finds satisfaction in those little twitches of discomfort it provokes in his supposed new lover.

John half-believes that Jonathan buys it, from the curious looks he gives John. Arabella probably doesn’t. Walt sends Lascelles a ‘what the fuck’ text John happens to see over his shoulder, followed by something about his dad, and a thumbs-up from someone called Maria. 

They should probably count themselves lucky Chris curates his Twitter better than his mouth. Pink News talks to Chris, because of course they do, and Lascelles seems satisfied when the follow-up story runs in a small side-article just a day before Christmas Eve. 

“Was that it, then?” John asks him over their fake lunch date at the Caffé Nero. The charade has been painless so far. Nobody expects any PDA from either of them; it is not in their natures. Chris’s imagination and filthy tongue provide enough mental images for everyone who will listen. 

Lascelles takes a long gulp of his pale extra-strong latte, tapping the spoon on the table in a way that tells John he would rather have a cigarette between his fingers. “There’s a complication.”

“Yeah?”

“Look, I can pay you. I know the AEF barely does. What do you want?”

“A favour, I suppose.”

“Fuck, no. One-off payment. Or you name your favour right now. I don’t want you coming back to me with this later.”

John sighs. “What do you need, Lascelles?”

“Bloody Facebook notified my mum.”

“So?”

“So.” Lascelles sets his cup down carefully, without so much as a clink of porcelain. “How do you feel about coming over to my parents’ for Christmas?”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Content warning for this chapter: Alcoholism discussed.

They take a train to Maidstone East that afternoon. It wouldn’t have been a very long drive, but John figures Lascelles has his reasons, if it's not avoiding holiday traffic, and he’s picking up the price of the ticket, so why not enjoy first class for once? 

“Don’t worry too much about luggage,” Lascelles said. John imagined trying to fit himself in one of Lascelles’s extra shirts instead of bringing his own (that unaccustomed feel of silk slipping between his fingers), and went back to his place to fill a backbag with T-shirts and underwear. 

Why did he say yes? Because you go to your boyfriend’s place for Christmas if his mum asks. Because he is at least a little curious to find out what Lascelles isn’t telling him. There is a secret buried here. He can smell it. 

And because, just maybe, this could be an opportunity to find out really makes the man tick--what John could do to get him to cooperate for once in his life. It would make all their jobs a little easier. People, on the whole, are simple. They want what they want, and if you give it to them they mostly become manageable. Lascelles, however, is bloody difficult. Lascelles does not want to be managed. And John is yet to figure out why a man who has had everything in the world handed to him still acts as if life is a game he needs to win. 

It’s not like John had any plans anyway, not since he stopped talking to his mum. He probably would’ve dropped in on Norrell on the Eve and slept through Christmas morning. He might have gone on a walk to enjoy the stillness of the city, stopped by the Cathedral to hear the choir. Instead he’s sitting opposite Henry Lascelles across a tiny table in a train, escaping the crowd in the carriage over, scrolling through his messages on his phone and not really reading a word. He’s thinking, remembering.

Christmas used to be just him and his mum and his mum’s boyfriend over a tiny dining table with a plastic tablecloth. It used to be a paper crown stuffed in his pocket, and escaping out to the balcony to smoke a fag after fag until the drinking started, and then he’d slip out and amuse himself until the small hours in the empty city. He remembers snow falling softly over the frozen city, windows lit up golden against the night, that feeling of home just out of reach. (Back then, you always got snow.)

He stretches out his legs and his calf brushes against Lascelles’s. The man jumps as if burned, pulling his leg to the side. John has had that leg over his shoulder before, but ever since they supposedly became an item, Lascelles has turned into a block of ice.

John’s determined not to bring up work while this pretense continues, or they’ll end up in a shouting match. It’s Christmas. He needs a bloody break. But it is turning out that Lascelles can get on his tits even without work for a reason. “I’m not about to jump on you, all right? Relax.” 

“Hmh.” Lascelles turns towards the window, rubbing his mouth as if to erase its downward turn. Bloody hell, but that hand and wrist and chin and neck still do something to John, quite apart from what a twat they’re attached to. “I should probably prepare you.”

“I’ve heard that before,” John jokes. 

“See, that’s what I mean. No filth in front of my mum, all right? She’s still trying very hard to believe I’ll get married and have children someday, and she’ll be pinning those hopes on you.”

John’s silence must speak volumes, because Lascelles continues, “Yes, I know. Just be… nice, I guess. Be nice to my mum. I’d rather let her down gently, like every other time, sometime after Christmas. Dad’s going to be a terror, but you’ll survive. Uncle Jack will get roaring drunk. I think you’ll like my sister, but don’t let her trick you into walking her dog. That beast is used to an hour or more every evening.” 

And it is a crime of some sort, has to be, that Henry Lascelles has a dad and a mum and a sister and a funny uncle, and all John has is his work and a lonely apartment with a broken stove. On top of all that money and opportunity and misused power, Henry bloody Lascelles has a real family. “Don’t worry,” John says. “I’ll behave.”

-

The drive up from the station is longer than he expected, even after a change of trains. It’s a taxi, because ‘Dad’s busy’, and apparently even the wealthy no longer have chauffeurs. The early night has fallen and a drizzle of rain envelops them as they pass through rolling hills dotted with the darker shapes of deciduous trees, like splotches of watercolour in the blue-black landscape. The village of Uthcaire begins as a scattering of houses that coalesces into a town. They drive on, out beyond the peaked roofs and cobblestoned streets and the gas station, past the golf course, and a crossroads leading down to a secondary cluster of houses built around a factory, its tall pipe gently bellowing smoke.

Lascelles spends most of the ride staring out the window, and part of John wants to lean over and pull him up under his arm, to ask him what he’s thinking about. You know, like you’d do if your boyfriend was going home for Christmas and looked about as happy about it as a man about to be sentenced. But they’re not pretending for the sake of the taxi driver, so he lets him mope and watches the countryside instead, the silence between them tired and, for once, devoid of tension. 

“We’re here,” says Lascelles suddenly, though all John can see is trees. But then the car swerves around a corner of the well-kept dirt road and Uthcaire House comes into view.

John expected a stately home of some sort, and he isn’t easily impressed, but it still churns something in his belly to see the shape of the house, a gothic monstrosity rising from the wide open lawn. A row of windows is lit downstairs. These places are money sinks, better off being run as tourist attractions or wedding venues, they’re not homes for real people to live in. He does a quick calculation based on what little he’s seen on Country House Rescue and bites the inside of his cheek. Jesus. 

Uthcaire is proud of its Lascelleses. They must be proud of themselves, too, to keep up a house like this. 

The taxi rolls to a stop and Lascelles pays the eye-watering sum with his app like it’s nothing, and the doors ahead are opening, and John grabs his backbag and steps onto the gravel and into the pool of light spilling down the short flight of stairs. An Old English Sheepdog pushes its nose past the legs of a tall, slender shadow at the door and lopes to them, running circles in the taxi’s headlights. It lets out a single woof and comes snuffling at Lascelles’s legs as he gets out of the taxi. “Get off,” Lascelles mutters, jerking away from the dog’s attentions. “Daisy or Hazel or whatever your name is, _off_.” As the taxi drives off, John drops on his haunches to scratch the dog behind the ear and down the neck. It—she—slobbers gratefully on his jeans and sits down, leaning into his hand. 

“Henry!” The figure at the door extends a hand but does not make a move to come down the stairs. The voice is musical, refined. On a second look, John notices the walking-stick. “Darling, I’m so glad to see you. Please, introduce us.”

“You shouldn’t be running to open the door, mum."

“It’s all right, I was on the hall telephone just a moment ago.”

“Reception’s bad around here,” Lascelles says as he offers John a hand. “Sorry, I should have warned you. I keep telling mum to use VOIP.”

Somehow, out of all the things John has done with and to the man’s body, holding his hand while being led up the steps to his parents’ house is the strangest. Lascelles’s fingers curl through his, warmer than he’d expected. The dog prances in ahead of them, then sticks close to John’s legs, likely hoping for more scratches.

Underneath the hall light Lascelles’s mother is his spitting image, save for the hair, which is soft brown and gathered at her neck, crinkled and dry, belying the grey underneath. “It’s John, isn’t it?” 

“John, Anne. Mum, this is John.” Lascelles is already shrugging off his coat and hanging it up on an antique hat-stand. The hall is about the width of John's apartment, its end disappearing into shadows behind a staircase; open arches on either side lead off to other lit rooms. It’s almost as cold inside as out. Probably not worth it to heat so much open space. The wood-panelling must be Victorian, but the brass of the banister is gleaming and good as new. Lascelles’s mother looks John up and down with a pleased and expectant smile, incongruous on a face so like his. 

“Pleasure, Anne. Thank you for inviting me.” He offers his hand, and she grasps it between hers. 

“You’re very welcome. Come meet everyone, then we’ll get you set up.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Content warning for this chapter: Alcohol abuse, smoking, violence.

“We don’t use all of the house,” Anne explains as she beckons them to follow, “but there’s plenty of room.” 

“Yeah, I can see,” John says, and she laughs. Class and wealth divide acknowledged and dismissed. He wonders how much Lascelles has told his people about him, and how much of it is true. Either way, she must have pegged him for his income bracket at a glance.

The archway on the left leads into a wide open living room with a high ceiling and the shadows of ornate plaster mouldings on the walls and around the lamps. The space is dominated on one side by a set of tall windows, on another a fireplace with carvings of leaves working their way up the overmantle. There is a fire in the crate and the lamps are turned down low, intimate, allowing the light of the fire leap and play on the curvature of the armchairs of the seating area. A tall Christmas tree stands by the window, glittering quietly in gold and red and green.

John’s been to Lascelles’s house exactly once, and what he’d seen on the way to the bedroom was nothing like this; it had been all sharp edges, white walls, and the odd precisely positioned artwork—a polar opposite of this house with is sense of generations of entrenched wealth.

The dog dances ahead of them, trotting to a woman seated on the sofa, who greets her with a head-scratch. “Hello, Henry! Dad’s still in the study.” The sister, John assumes. She has a wide, sensible face set with lovely blue eyes and brown hair, and a square, heavy-set figure wrapped in a cardigan and a pair of corduroy trousers. She must be nearly ten years younger than Lascelles. 

So the white-bearded man with a whiskey in his hand must be Uncle Jack. He doesn’t bother to rise, but salutes them with his glass. Introductions confirm John’s suspicions. Lascelles kisses his sister’s cheek and silently gets another bottle from the bar for the old man, pouring himself a drink as well. 

“Dinner’s going to be in just another half-hour or so,” says Anne, gesturing at a set of closed doors at the end of the room. “Can I get you anything in the meanwhile? Sandwiches?”

“Mum, your back,” Lascelles says, irritation in his voice.

“It’s all right, darling, Dottie’s taking good care of us.”

So there are servants about here somewhere. John wonders if this display of normalcy is for his benefit. But it is getting late, he is hungry and tired, and would rather leave the thinking for later. “We’ll be all right for half an hour, won’t we, babe?” 

“Mmm.” Lascelles hides behind a swig of his whiskey, but John caught the sharp look of annoyance he threw him at that endearment. 

“I’ll let Dad know you’ve arrived,” says the sister, whose name is Gail, and disappears back through the archway. She has a long, confident stride, John notes.

“I’ll just check in on Dottie,” says Anne, and so they are left alone with Uncle Jack.

John looks at Lascelles, who shrugs. No help at that quarter. His eyes swivel to the old man. “You’re doing better than his last one,” says Jack, and laughs, his voice cracked and whiskey-wet.

-

‘Setting them up’ is a matter of hauling John’s bag and Lascelles’s cabin trolley up the stairs and into one of the five bedrooms ringed around the stairwell. The downstairs panelling is mirrored here in the upstairs hallway, but through the bedroom door, the walls are covered in a neutral pale green wallpaper. The furniture in heavy wood and old, all of one set. If this was ever Lascelles’s room growing up, it has long since been stripped of any personality. 

A set of three windows face west of the drive-way, down towards a dark line of trees. There is, of course, only the one bed, made of the same wood as the wardrobe and desk, and made up fresh and inviting, with the duvet turned for the night. Dottie can’t have done it all by herself, John thinks, and wonders about the people moving about in the house that he’s unlikely to ever be introduced to. It’s as if he’s stumbled into another century.

They have a few minutes alone. If this was really John’s boyfriend, he’d go for a cuddle and a few reassuring words, but the idea is as absurd as the rest of their charade. Lascelles’s cold shoulder is turned to him as he checks his messages. The bed suddenly looks a lot less appealing. “Hey,” he growls, “are we having a row?”

“What?” Lascelles turns a vague gaze in his direction. 

John glances at the door, still cracked open, and steps closer, lowering his voice. “It’s your game, ‘babe’, but so far you’ve been about as sweet with me as a lump of cheese.”

Lascelles looks sideways and answers just as softly. “Not true. I love cheese.”

“Not quite the point. Are we supposed to be fighting?”

Lascelles lets out an exasperated sigh and turns his phone off, stuffing it in his pocket. “We’re not fighting. I’m being standoffish to dampen my mother’s enthusiasm after she wrung my arm to bring the boyfriend over. Trust me, it’s all perfectly standard.” 

“It occurs to me you might have shared that before-hand.”

“Look, Childermass, I don’t like this any more than you do. We just need to convince mum, then she’ll convince--” He stops himself. “We’ll be out of here in a couple of days and ‘break up’ after New Year’s, all right?” 

“All right.” John raises his eyebrows, his tone more mocking than conciliatory. “I reckon I can improvise.” Lascelles is leaning close, so John sneaks a hand under his tailored suit coat, slips his thumb along the silk shirt at his waist. A turn of head, and he is breathing into Lascelles’s neck, feeling him instinctively curl back towards him. 

This, this is the only thing between them that always works, when everything else is like running through crossfire. 

\- 

April of that year. 

John found Lascelles in the inner courtyard of the office building, under the awning that smokers huddle under when the sudden April rains come pattering down. He shoved his phone in Lascelles’s face. “What is this?”

“The bill?” said Lascelles, looking unbearably smug in his rolled-up sleeves and the menthol cigarette dangling between his fingers. 

“No it bloody isn’t.” The bill they’d been preparing for years, finally up for consideration after Lascelles had finalized it for Westminster. They’d all been sent a copy. “There’s no mention of grassroots initiatives. What do you think Norrellite economics are all about?” 

“You’re missing the point, Childermass.” Lascelles gestured with his cigarette. “You want to create change, don’t you? That means pushing the Overton window little by little, not forcing through meaningless little regulations that bandaid cracks in a failing model. It means working on the large scale, but slowly.”

John’s lips twitched, baring his teeth. “Are you taking the piss?” 

Lascelles pressed his lips together to suppress a smile. “Oh I would never do that.” 

John had had it. The only MP they could get to listen to them, since Walt had started keeping his distance after that business with Emma. The only MP that showed up, that took their money and their papers, and it was this prick. It was useless telling Norrell that Lascelles was worse than nothing, that he was dampening every effort they made to dismantle the hegemony of neoclassical economics, and with it the power structures of the world. Lascelles liked those structures. He was part of them. And when he told Norrell to be careful, to be patient, Norrell listened. 

There was nobody else here. John glanced around all the same before stepping up to a member of parliament until their chests were almost up against each other, and Lascelles would have to take a step back or come into contact. 

He didn’t step back. When John slapped the cigarette out of his hand, something sparked in those dark, lazy eyes, and that infuriating little grin broke through. Lascelles knew he held all the power. What was John going to do about it? 

The first punch was like a shot of pure dopamine. The smack of fist on flesh, the little sound Lascelles made as he staggered back. But then straightened right back and John only just failed to dodge. Sharp knuckles grazed his chin, a knock he felt all the way to the back of his skull. There would be a bloom of black and blue there the following day. 

And then.

And then they just stood there, staring at each other, neither sure what to do with what had happened. With how it made them feel.

“That weird intense _thing_ you two have,” Chris would end up calling it. 

-

That same curve of smile. Lascelles’s fingers under John’s collar, tugging it into place. “Behave. You promised.”

John let his gaze linger on Lascelles’s lying mouth, before meeting his eyes. “So long as you do.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Content warning for this chapter: Homophobia, smoking, alcohol, unhappy families.

“Just in time,” says Anne as they return, and everyone rises, Uncle Jack and Anne with some effort. Gail puts her hand out to her mother. 

The double doors have been thrown open. It seems they’ve managed to miss Dottie again. Fairy lights sprinkle the dining room beyond with dots of light like holes punched into a black curtain. The table is long enough for twelve, but only six places are set, a spread of dishes between them—mash, cutlets and a salad among smaller dishes, simple enough fare, but with sauce served in a silver pan and an opened bottle of Chateau Margaux waiting by a crystal carafe of water. The room extends in one end again to a tall window, the sides lined with pictures, their details lost in the contrast between the darkness and the strings of lights that hang about the wall and scatter along the runner on the table. Cut hothouse roses are arranged in a neat round bouquet grace the end of the table.

And there’s Dad, standing by the fireplace, turning now, ponderous like a ship, first towards Anne, then back to frown at John. He doesn’t put his hand out, not to John or to help the old man out of his chair.

As Anne had given her face to her son, so the elder Lascelles seems to have given his to his daughter, though he must be a head taller than she is, and his manner is nothing like hers. His coat is beige, fitted, and the argyle sweater underneath looks made for comfort, but he wears every piece as if it was a part of royal armour. His lined face could be affable, but the expression upon it is not. “So that’s what’s-his-name.” 

“William—” Anne says softly. 

“I suppose I should say welcome.”

“That’s the usual sort of thing, yes,” says Henry Lascelles, and moves closer to John, his fingers seeking out his again. The incongruity is as shocking as the first time, and John turns his head to look at Lascelles’s profile. His eyes are lazy-lidded, but the line of his mouth is sharp, and he looks his father boldly in the eye. “And you know his name.”

William Lascelles’s lips pull apart, and it is not a smile. “Let’s go in before I lose my appetite.” 

John reminds himself not to feel sorry for these people. Anne’s look of embarrassed distress, Gail’s carefully blank expression—none of this is his business. And he’s not learned anything about Lascelles that he didn’t know before. 

They file in, John tucked away between Anne and Lascelles, opposite Gail and Jack at the table. William takes his place at the head of the table, and John thinks he catches Anne throwing worried glances in his direction. Dad hasn’t got the memo about pretending to be normal in front of the plebs, it seems. John compliments the house to her until she relaxes and reaches for the cutlets.

Gail starts up chatter about the charms of carrot-and-potato mash and the contrasting cooking times, which veers into the subject of veganism while the food is being distributed. Gail is against, at least when it comes to pet-owners demanding vegan feeds for carnivorous animals (she is a vet, it turns out); Henry is neutral on the subject, and Anne curious. 

“So, you work for that foundation Henry’s been playing with, eh?” William asks John.

“Yeah, I do research for the AEF.” 

“Post-doc?”

“Master’s.”

William snorts. It’s obvious John didn’t graduate from Oxbridge, and he figures that’s all William needs to know. “I’ve read some of those proposals you’ve put out. Soft-headed stuff. I thought economists are supposed to be pragmatic.”

“William, please,” says Anne. “No politics at Christmas. You promised.” And she must have at least some sway over her husband, because he falls quiet and focuses on dicing up his meat.

Gail breaks the brief moment of silence. “Have you given John the itinerary already?” She is asking Lascelles, but smiling at John. “Christmas dinner is tomorrow, and then we open presents during or around lunch on Christmas Day, after we get back from church.”

“Delayed satisfaction,” says Lascelles, and matches her smile. “That mattered rather a lot more when we were children.” John may never get used to this: Lascelles slouched forward, clear-eyed still despite his shot, smiling at him as if they’re mates. More than mates. Politicians need to know how to put up an act, he supposes. 

The food vanishes to more discussion of family traditions and the parish church, but dessert is promised. John escapes for a smoke through the French window to a patio that runs alongside the house, encompassing the sitting room and dining room, and extending out beyond, its end disappearing into lumpy shadows. The horizon is dark and eerily quiet, as it only can be in the country. The rain’s let up, at least, leaving the geometric patterns of the patio tiles glistening.

The sound of voices amplify, he catches a snatch of a sentence, and then it is gone with a click. The hairs on the back of his neck stand up as William Lascelles is drawn out in black shadow and an outline of faint golden light from within, but the man simply comes up to him and digs out his own cigarettes. 

They stare out in the black nothing, up at the starless sky, smoking in silence. John’s got nothing to say to this man. 

“Look,” says William at last, as someone has to speak, “I can’t help what Henry gets up to in the city, but this is my house. We’re all supposed to be modern these days, aren’t we, but there’s a limit, don’t you know? _Do_ you know what I mean?”

John bites the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing. “I think I do.” 

“Keep that shit in the city.”

“Understood.”

“Good.”

The French window opens, letting out a waft of chocolate smell. “Dessert’s here.” Henry Lascelles slips out as his father saunters back in, stubbing his cigarette out in a birdbath. “Sorry about that,” he says once they are alone. “I didn’t notice he was gone.”

“I’ll live. A charmer, isn’t he?”

Henry stuffs his hands in the pockets of his jacket, his shoulders inching up against the cold. “What did he say?” 

“I think he told me not to fuck you while we’re here.”

“Did he.” Lascelles breathes a laugh, and John is reminded of all the times he’d wanted to punch that grin off his face. This time, he feels an answering one tugging at the corners of his own lips. “Well, come on in, dessert’s chocolate mousse.”

After dinner there is tea and more whiskey, and conversation that never seems to end, none of it particularly interesting. At ten, Anne begins to yawn, and at ten thirty the party breaks up. 

They climb up the stairs, but Lascelles pulls John to the side, away from their bedroom. “I want to show you something.”

Past the arrangement of rooms around the stairwell and by way of a narrow corridor, they go into the back of the house. Through an open doorway John spots a library, its windows like black holes cut into the faintly lit wall. Lascelles leads him to the end of another corridor, a door snuggled in a corner of the house, next to another black-glass window.

Through the door is another bedroom, and as soon as Lascelles switches the light on, John knows what it is. 

There’s a masculine sort of vanity pushed up against one wall and a Robert Thompson wardrobe next to it, but the walls are white and the cover on the bed is a stark red. There’s a stack of vinyl records and an old player, a chest pushed up below the window, black heavy curtains and a reading lamp, and a book-case stuffed of paperbacks. In one corner there is an electric guitar, and John is definitely going to get back on the subject of that guitar later. 

“Ah.”

“So long as this room is here, this is my home, too.” Lascelles spreads his hands, indicating everything from the Ziggy Stardust album cover to the ashtray on the windowsill. “And I’m not letting Dad put _my date_ into one of the lesser guest bedrooms.” 

John laughs out loud at Henry fucking Lascelles acting like a pouty teenager. He can imagine young hanging out the window, blowing smoke out before the smell can stick to the curtains; all that same pretentiousness and rage, only packaged differently. “I don’t mind,” he says, though he knows this isn’t about him at all. 

Lascelles twirls around and pins him with a look, and even then it is not about him. This anger is far more mundane than what he’s used to, and just a little sad. “No,” Lascelles says. “You’re mine. He’s not telling you what to do. Do you understand? He doesn’t get to tell either of us what to do.” 

“I understand.” John steps up and puts his hands on either side of Lascelles’s face. This time the man doesn’t fidget or pull away, and instead lets John press his mouth on his, soft and just a little dirty, the tip of his tongue tracing his upper lip. “And you want me to fuck you now, don’t you?” 

Tension seems to melt from Lascelles’s neck, and John feels a soft puff of breath against his skin. “Yes, please, if you don’t mind.”

It’s the first time he’s ever asked so nicely.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is pure smut. I had to change the fic's rating for this. 
> 
> Content warnings for this chapter: Belligerent sex, bit rough, emotionally unavailable lovers, smoking.

“This is why I hate coming home,” Lascelles says as John backs him towards the bed. He’s got his shirt half-off, the jacket spread out on the floor, his lip swelling from a bite; the beginnings of stubble under the pads of John’s fingers. The cover puffs as he lands on it. The sheets could probably be fresher. All those closed-off rooms. “He’s always here, and you can’t bloody get away. It takes the cab forty minutes just to drive up here, and then it hardly feels worth it to make the point to leave. Have you ever tried storming off in protest forty minutes after a fight?”

“Henry, shut the fuck up.” The name is an insult on his tongue and it doesn’t go unnoticed; John can tell by the way Lascelles’s fingers tighten in his hair, his hips angle themselves forward. Lascelles loves being insulted in bed. It gives him a reason to stay angry. John crawls over him and seeks out his mouth again. They move together, tongue to tongue, chest to chest, stirring up heat between them. The rain’s started up again, pattering softly on the windowpanes. 

Lascelles’s mouth on John’s neck, a touch of teeth, warm wet breath. He pulls back, still curled up towards him, and unbuttons his own trousers, leaving a long stretch of pale skin from a faint treasure trail up to his exposed neck. John’s cock pulses in response, and it’s not even Pavlovian, this is the very crux of his sexuality, the essence of what ignites him. He hooks the front of Lascelles’s trousers and tugs down, just as Lascelles’s clever long fingers find his crotch and cup it, contouring themselves around the bulge. 

Lascelles knows how to apply pressure in that precise way of his so that John feels served even through the press of the zipper and the unforgiving material. He grinds against that hand, and Lascelles lies back with a lazy, self-satisfied grin. John lets him undo his zipper, wrap those fingers softly around his bollocks, press and slide along his cock, coaxing it to full hardness. 

There’s nothing quite like another man’s hands on you, knowing he’s doing this for you, knowing exactly what it’s doing to you. He tugs at those trousers again, and Lascelles reaches down to release his own member from his boxers. John looks down, sees his thumb pull back the foreskin, the dark pink head peeking out beneath. “I’ve got rubbers,” he says, his voice rough even to his own ears. “No lube. Want to rough it out?” 

“Sec,” says Lascelles, and John hates his voice when it gets that heavy and full, hates it because it makes him want Lascelles more than he ever intended to. Lascelles kicks his trousers off the rest of the way, twists away and reaches under the bed, and pulls a cardboard box half out. Its sides are turned down, and John glimpses what looks like a black dildo in plastic casing before Lascelles fishes out a half-full bottle and slides the box back under the bed. He wonders about the expiration date, but then Lascelles is turning back, and he can’t have that. 

“Ah-ah.” He spreads himself over Lascelles’s back and keeps him down on his hands and knees. Lascelles’s neck dips and he grinds backwards, backing his arse against John. It’s not much of a handful, that skinny behind, but the lines of Lascelles’s wiry graceless body call to him just as they are; that angular hip, and skin that begs him to drag his nails across it. A soft “mm” sounds at the back of Lascelles’s throat, not quite a surrender, but he stays where John’s put him. 

John presses his thumbs on the insides of Lascelles’s thigh and pushed them apart, watches him sink on to his forearms, and dives in with his tongue. It’s been a long day but he knows this hole, the way it puckers up tight and dry in surprise, and pulses when John presses on his perineum; he knows almost to a beat when Lascelles will begin to grumble with the effort of relaxing. “You filthy fucker,” Lascelles says, muffled into the covers, and it almost sounds affectionate to John. 

John loves this, loves teasing a man open, his saliva dripping slowly down to his bollocks, and Lascelles’s arse is as clean as always, manscaped and lotioned to perfection, as if he knew someone would come sniffing around there eventually. He licks and presses and eventually fucks him with his tongue, and knows they could both come just from this, they have done before. But John stops, pulls up for air and digs out the rubbers from the back pocket of his jeans, because he’s not going to get any bloody harder than this. He tears one open and slides it on himself after just a couple of strokes. Lascelles’s prick is taut and bouncy under his questing hand. 

He goes in for another lick, then replaces his tongue with the tip of his thumb, presses in, pumps in, out, in, licks in again. Lascelles grabs a pillow and snuggles it under his chin, something of a purring cat in his pose. There is always that point when they do this that Lascelles begins to soften, begins to let go, and it makes John want to go for the kill.

He whispers something mean into Lascelles’s ear, making him jump and clamp down, but by then John has two fingers up his arse and it does him no good. He crawls up Lascelles’s body and they whisper insults like tendernesses. John slides out his fingers with a pop, lines himself up and makes sure his cock is in before Lascelles can clamp up again. Then they are linked, and John’s vision goes hazy and he digs his nails into Lascelles’s hip, to hold back, to keep going slow. “There,” he pants, encased, “happy?” 

“I’m not made of fucking glass,” and so John slams into him, just to feel him jolt, hear him choke out a cry. “Fffuck, that’s good,” Lascelles hisses, one hand reaching back, flailing until it finds John’s thigh, grabs on tight to pull him even closer. “Yes, keep going.” 

And John does, slappy, sweaty, wet fucking, and after a while Lascelles is pushing back at every thrust, no longer shying away. John presses bruises into his thighs and matches his rhythmic gasps. He can tell Lascelles is jerking himself off, one shoulder rolling in rapid succession, so he wraps an arm around his neck and chokes him just a little to get him back off balance. Lascelles falters, his toes scrabble against the covers and John throws him down, shoves him against the bed, splayed hand on his shoulder blade, and fucks him hard and furious, perhaps to remind himself he hates him.

But he doesn’t hate him, this gorgeous spread of him, this tight-knotted mess of a man, not when he’s broken down like this, and that thought pisses him off enough to short-circuit all his good sense and condense him to a single point of animal instinct.

They are always like this, hard and heavy and fast. Look at them, John’s not even got his jeans off, Lascelles is still in his socks. Black, up most of his calf, one still pulled up perfectly, the other coiled at his ankle.

John cries out softly and lets go, buries his face into Lascelles’s shoulder, his muscles shuddering. His hand closes over Lascelles’s own on the man’s cock, squeezing his grip tighter. He’s doing all the work again, why does he always end up doing all the bloody work? But he’s already coming, Henry’s arse is gripping him, milking him with every roll of their bodies, and he lets it happen, lets himself tumble down.

How long have they been? Fifteen minutes? Bloody disgraceful. He lifts himself up on his arms for the last few decisive slams, then rolls off, gasping for breath.

Lascelles is still on his knees, still moving his hand, there’s a string of come from the end of his prick to the wet spot on the bed, but he’s not done, so John reaches out and claims that last pull and spurt. Lascelles cries out and buries his face in the covers. John brings his fingers to his mouth and sucks the salty sticky spunk off before falling on his back on the bed. His chest is heaving, and he can hear Lascelles’s ragged breathing. 

Lascelles sits up after a moment, crossing his forearm over his forehead, then his hand down his face, and up through his hair. His right one, John notes, and grins to himself, remembering where the left had just been. What a mess he’s made. As quick and dirty as they’d been, John may never get tired of seeing Henry Lascelles like this, an absolute soggy disaster, just before he digs out his fussy little wet wipes and his awful personality reasserts itself.

“Thanks,” Lascelles says, shifting his hips. John notes that faint pink flush of exercise tinting his face and chest and thinks of the space he’s made inside him. 

The bedsprings jump as Lascelles gets off. John had noticed the little door off to the side of the room before, and it is indeed an en-suite, judging by the flash of white tiling beyond and, soon enough, the sound of running water. This must be a small bedroom, he realizes, thinking once again back to _Country House Rescue_. He’s seen bedrooms with sitting rooms attached, full bathrooms made to be lingered in, maids’ closets. 

He pulls the condom off and ties it up, wipes himself off on a sock and pulls his trousers up. He picks up Lascelles’s coat off the floor and finds a pack of Chesterfields and lighter in the pocket. The night air hits his chest as he pushes up the window, moist and cool, but the smoke burns down into his lungs, almost warming him. 

Lascelles comes and presses up against his back, kisses his bare shoulder, his cheek still moist from the splash of cold water across it. This sort of thing has happened before, some sudden show of a hungry kind of tenderness popping up in Lascelles before the high of sex has had a chance to recede. John shifts, and Lascelles makes to move back, but John grabs his arm and pulls him back. At least one of them’s not ashamed of being human. 

Lascelles settles against him, and, thankfully, stays silent. 


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Content warning for this chapter: Cheating? Does that need a warning? Anyway, cheating, and yet more Tories.

Somewhere in the night, the weather turned to freezing. In the morning when John pushes up the window the rain has turned into minute snowflakes that disappear as soon as they touch ground. He holds out his hand to watch a few land and melt on his palm. No white Christmas this year either, only this echo of a promise that won’t stick. John has never really been sentimental about that, but Christ, it has been a long and dark autumn, and it wouldn’t have hurt to get something beautiful at the end of it.

Lascelles is still asleep, one bare shoulder above the covers. John’s almost sure he heard him get up earlier to go to the bathroom and felt him crawl back into bed, but sleep muddles memory. They’ve slept a foot apart from one another all night, John curled at one edge of the bed and Henry Lascelles at the other. 

Lascelles doesn’t really have to try so bloody hard to get the message across. John gets it. Then again, it’s understandable. The way they fuck, someone might get ideas. Their relationship is only fake because they say it is, and so the distance needs to be reasserted over and over again. The idea of actually being in a relationship with someone like John must be appalling. “You’re not that bloody irresistible,” he mutters at the sleeping form, snuffs his cigarette and goes to find his shirt. 

Their bags are still in the guest bedroom, but no one stops John on his walk of shame from the back of the house to the front, so he washes up in the room by the stairwell and changes into clean clothes. It’s quiet, the wainscoting muffling sound, the hallways abstracting distant thumps until there is no telling where they’re coming from, but when he emerges, there is the unmistakable clink of crockery from downstairs. He follows it. 

The sitting-room is transformed by the pale winter morning light. The Christmas tree seems sadder somehow, the shadows older. In the dining room, a second set of double doors is thrown open to a sun parlour and the flow of light fills the room with something like cheer. “Oh, goodness!” says a woman just setting down a plate of fresh-baked croissants when John walks in. 

“Hello, Dottie,” John says. 

“I didn’t expect anyone yet. The family usually only comes down at ten, nine thirty at the earliest. Would you like some tea, coffee?”

“It’s all right, I’ll help myself.” He picks up a roll and tosses it from hand to hand; it is still warm. Dottie, a pale woman in her forties in a sensible cardigan, smiles and disappears into another mysterious nook of the house, only to come back a moment later to drop off a fresh pot of tea. 

John eats his roll and drinks his tea on his feet, watching snowflakes accumulate in ephemeral frosting on the patio furniture outside. The cold penetrates through the glass despite the electric heater blazing at the end of the breakfast table. He wonders if in summer the same room becomes hot and muggy like a greenhouse. But it is, he’ll grant, beautiful. 

He’s just started to consider going snooping around when Lascelles comes clattering downstairs. His shirt is rumpled and his hair finger-combed, and John thinks he really has no business looking so bloody fuckable first thing in the morning. He frowns at John. “Christ, here you are. Do I have to put a leash on you?” 

“Kinky.” John sets his half-finished tea back down on its saucer. The white of the table-cloth remains unsullied, but even the wrinkle he’s made in it feels like a violation of Dottie’s honour. 

Lascelles saunters up, picks up John’s tea and finishes it. “Mm. Wake me up next time.” And then he leans in and kisses him, lips moist and bitter, and it is both right and not-right at the same time. John rests a hand on Lascelles’s waist and keeps him there, one, two, three seconds. 

He can’t quite read Lascelles’s expression when they part, but there is a small smile on his lips. John’s done something to please him. There’s a rapping on the door to the patio. Turning, John sees a woman and a man in riding costumes and helmets outside, and it all begins to make sense. Lascelles brushes past him to let them in. 

“Happy Christmas,” says the man, who resembles nothing so much as a mastiff in human form. He is close to fifty, in John’s estimate. The woman can’t be older than thirty. “We were out on a morning ride and thought we’d drop in. Maria’s idea.” 

“Happy Christmas, Jim. John, these are our neighbours, the Bullworths. Jim, Maria, this is my boyfriend John.”

“Nice to meet you,” Jim says, takes off his gloves and shakes John’s hand. His hand is big and square and sweaty. “You know, I voted for you gays.”

“Thanks.” 

“In the House of Lords, you know. When the marriage bill came up. Happy to do so. It was time. I said as much to Maria’s father at the time.”

“Are you staying for breakfast?” Lascelles interrupts. 

“We wouldn’t want to impose, would we, Maria?”

“No, really, stay,” said Lascelles. “You haven’t even seen Mum yet. Have a seat.”

The woman speaks up for the first time. She has a refined voice, almost too much so—practiced—and she lifts her chin as she speaks. She’s beautiful, John supposes, if you like that sort of conspicuous perfection. Her black hair is in a messy up-do under the helmet and her heart-shaped face is painted with a careful kind of elegance. “Henry, it’s a lovely idea, if you just have a stall free for Jonas and Adrienne. I wouldn’t want to leave them out in this weather.”

“Of course. I’ll come let you into the stables.”   
  
Jim’s protestations are soon squashed. Lascelles picks up his coat and gloves and so John finds himself sitting down to breakfast to small-talk with yet another Tory minister. He should push his agenda, he knows. It’s an opportunity to network. But Gail comes in through the patio soon after with her giant dog shaking icy moisture off her fur, and then Anne picks her careful way through the house and sinks into a chair with a sigh of relief, and Henry still hasn’t returned. 

The conversation has turned to horses, which everybody at the table knows a hell of a lot more about than John does. Nobody seems to mind or make note of it when he mutters an excuse and slips out to the patio. 

The snowflakes sting his face like so many tiny needles, but daylight reveals the lay of the land, including the size of Uthcaire House extending beyond the patio, and the open lawn around them, sloping down gently towards the treeline, the grass dusted with frost. John jogs around the house, past shuttered enclosed gardens, many windows with drawn curtains, the house looming above, somehow seeming to have more eyes than any city tower block. It doesn’t help that logically John knows there’s only a handful of people in residence and none are likely to be staring out looking for him, or that he has every right to be out here—he can feel the house itself noticing and disapproving. He doesn’t belong. 

Around the corner he spots the stables, a low building next to a fenced-off paddock. Any footsteps leading down are already gone, melted or lost under newly falling snow. John shivers, rubs his hands together and blows on them, and marches down to the stables. 

He still knows how to move quietly when he needs to. Maybe he’ll catch them in the act. Maybe not; either way he’s in no doubt about what the hold-up here is. He hears a horse snorting, the clop of a hoof, and low voices as he approaches. The door is ajar, so he risks a look. Two people are entwined, leaning against a supporting beam, heads pressed together. Red nails lie sharp against the back of Lascelles’s neck. “Tell me again,” Maria demands. 

“Fuck’s sake, darling. You really don’t trust me, do you?” 

“Only about as far as I can throw you.” 

“There’s no one else. Just you. I promise. It’s just another two or three weeks.”

“Three?” Her voice rises, not shrill but heavy with panic. 

“All right, two. You can tell him on the stroke of midnight after the legislation is signed, I don’t care. All right? And then no more hiding.”

John withdraws, not wanting to watch them snog. Listening to it is unpleasant enough. 

“And no more boyfriends,” she demands after a while, her voice heavy now with a different emotion, “not even fake ones.”

There is a smile in Lascelles’s voice when he echoes her. “No more boyfriends.” 


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Content warnings for this chapter: Smoking, homophobic slur, biphobia and cheating discussed; corrupt politics.

Maria is slogging back up towards the house across the wet lawn. Lascelles has just dug out his Chesterfields, huddled outside the stables under the awning. “So that’s why the deadline,” John says, stepping out from around the corner. 

It’s a pleasure watching Lascelles whip around like some villain in a panto. “Break up after New Year’s, you said?” John leans one shoulder on the stable wall, crossing his legs. “It makes sense now.”

Lascelles recovers quickly enough, scowling at John as he taps a cigarette out. “I didn’t know you were such a peeping Tom, Childermass.”

“Oh, no worries. I averted my eyes like a gentleman. But tell me, how much of all of this was planned? Did you pay for someone to take that photo just to get me here?”

“God, no.” A spark of match on matchbox, a flame touching the end of the cigarette, and Lascelles sucks in the smoke. “I still have no idea who took that photo or why. I just saw the opportunity once it showed up in the press.” 

“You needed a fake relationship to cover up a real one.” 

Lascelles grimaces. “Jim’s not the most attentive of husbands, but Maria tells me he’d started getting suspicious. Having a boyfriend became rather convenient.” He shakes the match until it extinguishes and drops it on the muddy ground. “It helps that Jim’s one of those people who’ve never quite managed to wrap their heads around bisexuality. If you ask him, we’re all just poofs and slags. No kind of danger to his wife’s virtue.”

“You ever considered just keeping it in your pants?” 

Lascelles snorts and takes a drag from his cigarette. John stares at him for a moment, then grunts and holds out his hand. Lascelles gives him the fag and gets a new one for himself, and they smoke quietly for a while.

John is angry, and he doesn’t want to be, and that makes him all the angrier. Nothing’s really changed, after all, has it? 

It’s Lascelles that speaks first. “Look, I…” He pauses with the cigarette halfway to his lips, purses them, and starts again. “I know we don’t exactly get on, but you’ve been an absolute sport about all this, and I do appreciate it. Frankly, I wish you’d let me pay you for it.”

John’s lip curls. “I’m not—”

“Yeah, no, you’ve got your standards, haven’t you? It’s just now I’ve put myself in the awkward position of owing you.” 

_It’s not just that, though, is it?_ It would be the easiest thing in the world for John to go back up to the house, pull Jim aside and tell him everything, and so ruin whatever partnership Lascelles is counting on to secure that piece of legislation. A part of him wants to. The problem is, he has a fairly good idea of what it is. He helped draft it. “It’s the anti-competition exemption bill for local businesses, isn’t it? Our bill?”

Lascelles nods. “Jim’s sister’s husband is the cabinet minister. They’re taking me at my word that this will be in their interest. I doubt he even read it.”

“ _Is_ it in their interests?”

Lascelles shrugs. “It is if they buy some local manufacturing business, I suppose.”

“And who owns the factory I saw on the drive up here?”

Lascelles smiles, and takes another drag of his cigarette. 

John crushes his between his fingers and throws it on the ground. “You could have bloody asked me. Just asked me. It’s _our_ bill. It’s in _my_ interests that it gets passed. If this is all really about the job, then why didn’t you ask me?”

Lascelles is surprised, his cigarette hanging loose between his fingers, so John leans in. “Do you really get off on your own cleverness that much? Or is it because you actually want to be around me, but don’t know how to be normal about it?”

Lascelles scowls. “That’s not—”

John grabs his shoulder and shoves him back against the stable wall. “Mr Member of Parliament. Using our poor naive little foundation to line your own pockets. Sleeping with the neighbour’s wife, then turning around and shagging me. Did you ever have a real relationship? Do you even know how?”

“Do you?” Lascelles shoots back, his eyes glittering. They always end up back here, don’t they, always, always brewing violence between them, never quite knowing how to let go. John shoves again, meaning it to bruise, then turns and stalks back towards the house.

The sun’s melted the snow, leaving behind only soggy grass and mud. 

-

The Bullworths aren’t going anywhere yet, as William and Jim have started ‘one of their interminable rounds of billiards’, as Anne calls it. Not wanting to be caught hanging around the sitting room when Lascelles makes it back, John checks out the game.

The billiards room is across the hall, it turns out. Despite the worn state of the fabric on the table this room, too, looks like something from the telly with its mahogany and burgundy and dark green, and the sounds of the game, clicks and pocks and swearing, echoing up towards the high ceiling. John is invited to join in for a round, then another. They talk about the game, and only about the game. Jim’s own billiards table is at the restorer’s, reportedly; it was manufactured somewhere in the eighteenth century and one of the legs has been wobbly for a decade.

“Best be shoving off,” says Jim at last at the termination of the third round. “Family’s coming around to lunch, and then another set for dinner. I’ll just go collect the wife.” He seems to truly regret it, his unhappy mouth only making him look more mastiff-like. William lets him go with some reluctance, but stops John when he goes to follow Jim into the sitting room. 

“One more game, all right?”

They play silently. John fobs a turn. William scowls. “Don’t _let_ me win. Don’t be _kind_. I’m not that old.” 

William bags the next three, John the next four, taking the game. 

“Right,” says William, lips drawn back from his dentures. “It’ll be lunch soon.” He stalks out. 

For a moment John wonders if he’s failed some kind of a test, but then, while putting away his cue on the rack, he understands, and what he realizes makes him laugh. William just wants to win, fair and square, without any help from anyone, and it makes him mad when he can’t. The only thing John could have done to appease him would have been to let him win, but so sneakily it would have seemed like a real defeat. The father is as vain as the son. 

The pieces are falling into place, and he wonders how he could ever have been so slow on the uptake. 

He wanders back into the sitting room, the weight that had been on his chest transformed into a kind of reckless merriment. Lascelles and Gail are sitting by the fire, the former with his phone in his hand and his chin rested on his fist, the latter reading a book. The dog (whose name is Hazel) is curled up in front of the lit fire. Lascelles looks up and gives John a searching look when he enters, and accepts his nod as an offer of peace. There is something oddly earnest about the look of relief that crosses his face. “Oh, hello. How was the game?”

“I won,” says John and laughs, and Gail looks up curiously from her book. It wasn’t a nice laugh. “Got time for a tour before lunch? You promised to show me the—” he falters, not having thought his excuse through, “grounds?”

“Yes, of course.” Lascelles levers himself out of his chair and then he is next to him, taking his hand. For the third time since they arrived, John notes. For no reason whatsoever. It isn’t for the audience, he realizes. That’s not it at all. On the contrary, the audience is there _so that_ Lascelles can hold his hand. 

John grips the hand tight and pulls him into the hall, up the stairs. Lascelles is running to keep up, taking several stairs at a time with long-legged strides. “What’s got into you?” he asks when John shoves him through the door to their room, and begins to say something else, but John stops him with a sloppy kiss. 

“I take it I’m forgiven,” Lascelles says as John is tugging his shirt out of his trousers and dipping down to mouth at the crook of his neck. There is a smile in his voice. 

John grabs Lascelles’s hair and pulls back to look him in the eye. “You like me,” he states. 

“Well, I—” Lascelles stops, frowns in confusion. 

“I was right, wasn’t I? It’s not about the bill or the affair at all. You wanted to date me. You wanted to bring me home to your parents for Christmas. You wanted to let me get to know you.”

Lascelles shrinks away from him, crossing his arms between them and backing away. “It’s not—It’s not how we are, we’ve never—I mean, I know _you_ don't like me. So, so why would I…”

“Your politics are atrocious.” John takes a step forward. “And you’re always so bloody smug about it, so proud of all the wrong things. The things I might actually like about you, those you stuff away like shameful secrets.”

“Like what?” Lascelles’s arms are still crossed over his chest, but a faint smile is creeping to his lips. 

“Like that you apparently play guitar.” John takes another step forward.

“ _Tried_ to play guitar.” This time Lascelles does not back up. "Ancient history."

“That you pick up projects, like the AEF, just to annoy your dad. That you ride horses but hate dogs. You make your house look nothing like the place you grew up in. You’ve got a wank box under your bed and you stay up nights playing video games when you can’t sleep…” 

“Now, hold on…”

“You care about what your mum thinks.” John takes hold of Lascelles’s wrists and moves them aside gently, pressing up against his chest. “And you’ve really got to learn to stop caring about what your dad thinks.”

“John.” The name is a broken sound; Lascelles’s posh pronunciation crumbling to pieces. 

“Say you like me.”

“Of course I bloody like you.” Lascelles takes a long, ragged breath. John trails his lips across the line of his jaw and feels him shiver in response. “You’re gorgeous. You’re fearless. You’re…”

“That’ll do.” John tilts his head up and this time there is no saying who kisses who. 


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Content warnings for this chapter: Awful family interactions, alcohol abuse, no justice for poor Maria (maybe I have to write another fic for that; I AM sorry for it).

“John?” 

“Mm. Yes?”

“Can I ask you a favour?”

“What, another one?”

“When they bury me, after Maria’s murdered me, tell everyone I was a great shag.” 

It’s not even funny, but they both break out laughing, curling into each other like two giggling idiots. They’ve missed lunch, but nobody’s come up looking for them, at least so far as either of them noticed. Between the en-suite and the bottle of tequila Henry had in his bag, there’s been no need. 

The sheets smell of sex and spilled alcohol and traces of cologne. New couples do this, John realizes: burrow together under the covers and only leave to go to the bathroom or fetch something, always coming back to bed for more. They could let the whole day slip away like this, in turns lazy and comfortable, and then buzzing with pleasure. Lascelles—Henry—Henry has his hand on the back of John’s neck, petting it in small circles, and John finds himself afraid to move an inch in case it might give Henry a reason to stop. 

It has never been like this between them before. They’ve missed so many opportunities. Their problems are still going to be there once they leave this room, but they’re going to have this.

It’s getting darker outside. Either a storm is brewing or they really have to start peeling themselves out of bed if they’re going to make it out before dinnertime. John presses his forehead against Henry’s bare shoulder and makes a dissatisfied sound. Henry’s hand stops; John reaches back and replaces it. The motion continues. 

“Should I say sorry?” John says, staving off leaving just a moment longer. “About the charming Mrs Bullworth.” Not that John is sorry. He’s not, not in the least. Perhaps a better man would be.

“It was going to happen anyway. You’ll probably think I’m a bit of a shit for this—”

“Oh, I already do.”

“—But I was always going to break up with her as soon as we got the bill through. In my defense— Would you like to hear my defense?”

“Let me guess. You thought you were both just horny, she thought you were serious. And then you got stuck with her for far longer than you intended.”

“More or less, yeah.”

“For a politician, your communication skills really need work.”

“Oh, do they? What am I signalling now?” 

“Either you want to go again or you’ve lost something up my arse.”

That’s not funny either, and they still laugh. What a stupid, happy, randy pair of bastards, John thinks, but can’t bring himself to be anything else.

-

John ends up having to borrow one of Henry’s shirts after all. It’s his own fault for underestimating how much of his own clothing he was going to get cum on. He pinches the fabric between his fingers and lets go, watching it fall smoothly in place. It feels exactly as soft and alien against John’s skin as he’d imagined on the way up; like wrapping himself up in someone else. Somehow he doesn’t mind as much as he’d thought he would. 

Henry reaches around from behind him and tugs the shirt back in place under John’s waistband. “You look fine. It suits you.” John catches sight of the two of them in the bathroom mirror, marvels again at Henry’s capacity to smooth out bed hair. He even smells fresh. “Now come on, time to face the family.”

“You go on ahead,” John says. “Just give me the wifi code first, all right? I’ve got people to text ‘happy Christmas’ to.”

“Coward,” Henry says, but doesn’t make a fuss. John figures he can take about fifteen minutes before going down to join the others.

-

John checks his watch as Gail uncovers the main dish, turkey steaks arranged in the shape of a sundial, set on a bed of steamed broccoli and mushroom sauce. Dottie’s gone home to Cornwall for Christmas, leaving Uthcaire House even more stranded in its sea of primordial country darkness. Anne coos at the dish, and it does smell like heaven when it hits John’s plate. He spoons on the sauce and applies his knife and fork. 

“No, leave that broccoli on the plate,” says William as Anne tries to serve him, despite her bad back. “I don’t have to eat that shit on Christmas.”

Henry helps himself to extra broccoli. Gail and Anne share a worried glance. William has emptied his wine glass once and poured another. For a while everyone just eats and drinks, the silence stretching uncomfortably around the table. 

Uncle Jack leans over to John and nudges him. “Eat up, enjoy it while you can, eh?” He means it for a whisper, but it comes out too loud, full of spit and fragrant with drink. “Gotta hurry up before they really get going.” He cackles. Jack’s been drinking steadily all through the dinner, and he hasn’t restricted himself to wine. John glances up to see William’s face pinch in annoyance. 

John read _Anna Karenina_ for school. He’d only intended to sample it and dash off a passable review like every other kid, but something about that first line grabbed him, and he ended up staying up late every night until he finished the entire book. _All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way._ He still has no idea whether the first part is true. The second part is only partially true. Some things never change from one unhappy family to the next, and one of those is the good old traditional Christmas row. John’s seen it often enough. He’s lived it. And he’s had enough of it to last two or three lifetimes. 

“The snowfall this morning was promising,” Gail tries. “We might get our white New Year’s Eve, if not Christmas. Hazel does love snow.”

John’s watch shows six thirty. He clears his throat, picks up his dessert spoon, and taps it against his glass. “I have a suggestion, if I may?” All eyes turn to him. He’s caught even William and Jack’s attention. “I heard there’s a tradition of delayed gratification in your family—no presents until around noon on Christmas Day, wasn’t that right?”

Gail nods. Lascelles has laced his fingers in front of his mouth and is watching John closely. 

“In my family, we did the opposite. We never could wait until the end of dinner on Christmas Eve to open our presents.” Mostly because by the end of it, everyone would be too drunk to appreciate them. “So if you’d indulge me, I’d like to give you all my presents now.”

“That’s very odd,” says William, stubbornly ill-tempered.

“Oh, but why not?” says Anne brightly. “What a wonderful idea, John.” 

“As you know, this was all rather last minute, so I’ve had to rely on the Internet.” John digs out his phone, thumbs it to life and opens his email to the order confirmations. He leans over the table to show it to Anne. “Here, this is for you: West End theatre tokens. No expiry date, any show you’d like to see.”

“Oh but… John, that’s lovely, but that’s in London.”

“I know. Henry can put you up. I figured you two could stand to spend more time together, and not just when he comes to visit.”

Anne’s eyes light up and she turns to Henry, beaming. That’s one down. 

“Jack, I got you a pair of warm slippers—” Jack scoffs, “—and a telescopic walking stick.” 

“I have a walking stick!”

“Does it extend to an unnecessary five feet so you can use it to poke people without getting up out of your chair?” 

Jack’s brows rise and he presses his wrinkled lips together, bobbing his head. All right, two down. 

“Gail—”

“It’s a bag of dog treats, isn’t it?” Gail smiles. 

“Ah. Yes, yes it is.”

“That’s all right. Everyone always gets me the same thing. I don’t mind. We could always use another bag, couldn’t we, Haze?” She reaches under the table to scratch the dog. John hears the thumping of a tail on the floor. 

“Right.” John presses on. “William, Henry, for you two I have a joint present.”

Henry lifts his head and tilts it slightly to the right. John knows that gesture; it’s a warning. William sits back and crosses his arms. John checks his watch again, and just then his phone beeps with an incoming message. “And there it is.” 

Sound does not travel very well through these halls, especially now that the slush-turned-rain has started beating the windows again. The rain has drowned out the engine of the car swerving into the drive-way outside, but now they can all hear the horn going once, twice. John stands up and holds his hand out to Henry. “Come on. Taxi’s waiting.”

Henry wipes his mouth and takes his hand. “Happy Christmas, everyone,” he throws back at the table as John pulls him through the double doors, to the sitting room, then the hallway, before anyone else recovers enough to object. 

Their bags are packed and waiting by the door, another detail John had taken care of while the soup was being served. They grab them and their coats and gloves and dive into the darkness, and in another moment they’re in the back of the taxi. The twin door slams shut out both the rain and Uthcaire itself, cocooning them in the pleather-smell of freedom. “You are unbelievable,” Henry says, buckling his seatbelt. “You’re perfect. How did you—”

“Don’t ruin it.” John laughs and Henry leans over, against the pull of the seatbelt, and finds John’s mouth with his own. His fingers flutter across the loose strands of his hair, as if fighting the urge to grab on and pull him into himself until they’re either crushed to dust or melt together.

New Year is still going to come. What happened here may disappear like a puff of smoke once they get back on track with their lives, their careers, and their diametrically opposed political positions. But it’s not New Year yet. 

The cabbie starts the counter, and the crunch of gravel under the wheels is accompanied by the thin, quiet sound of a Christmas carol medley on Radio 6.


End file.
